nz

Off on a road trip to New Zealand, doing both north and south island. Should be fun, will be the first visit to NZ. Will try to keep track of it and do up a bit of a highlights reel when I get back.

Peace out.

box full of fun

The camera arrived today! Got delivered around 10am to the office, so I've been sitting here trying to resist the urge to pull it out and play with it (minds out of the gutter, people). Did open it up to get the battery and charger out - I want to be able to play with it straight away when I get home and not have to wait for it to charge. Hopefully I find that the Compact Flash card I bought separately arrives today too, which was to be delivered home.

my first digital slr

I've been pondering this purchase for a looong time (Raffy, you can vouch for this - we were discussing this back in January!) and have finally bitten the bullet and bought it, a month after it's successor went on sale.

Introducing my new toy - the Canon EOS 40D.

Image courtesy of dpreview.com

Not going to bother with the usual technical spiel - admittedly this is partially because I don't really understand most of it yet myself... Anyway the 50D came out last month so I figured that this was as cheap as it would get. Plus I'm heading over to New Zealand very soon, and wanted to be able to capture the beauty of the landscape with more than my point-and-shoot Canon IXUS 800 IS. They were sold out at my local camera store, so I ended up purchasing it online.

Of course, I needed a lens to suit - enter the Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 Image Stabilized USM lens.

Image courtesy of dpreview.com

The 18-55mm lens that the standard lens kit comes with just didn't cut it for me, and I reckon the upgrade will be worth it. Also got an 8GB compact flash card and a spare generic battery, with a free bag coming with the camera too (not sure how good it will be though). So I'll need to pick up a tripod, filters, a better bag and maybe another lens before I take off. I'll have to leave the numerous other things I want until afterwards when I can afford it...

Dammit I'm getting all excited about it now... arrive already!

oversleep

Friday night - halloween party. Dressed as a mummy. Home made outfit, made from several square metres of calico torn into strips, wrapped and tied around me. Slowly started falling apart in the early stages of the night so I kept tying the loose ends together. Ended up having to cut myself out of it at the end of the night.

Go karting on Saturday. Had a great time, though I was comfortably running second when my kart runs out of fuel... Managed to recover to finish 3rd on the podium though, so it wasn't a total disaster.

Anyway, was out lateish on Saturday night, getting home at about 3:30am on Sunday morning. Now, this isn't very late by my standards, but here's the kicker - I didn't wake up until 4:45pm on Sunday afternoon. Now, I am notorious for my sleeping-in but the worst I've done is like 2-3pm. I was seriously freaked out when I finally woke up. Where the hell did Sunday go? Also, usually when I sleep in I struggle to fall asleep the next night. No problems here. Which was a shame, I was trying to stay up for the Formula 1...